something to wonder at
by queeniee
Summary: peeta wishes she could understand gale. femme!peeta. galepeeta. severely au from the book.


Peeta doesn't know him, doesn't know Gale at all past a passing glance and the lovesick titters of her friends at school. She knows Gale is attractive and she knows Gale can't afford the bread her family sells and she knows Gale sells his illegal game to her dad when her mother isn't around to scold. And, like everyone knows, she knows Gale and Katniss are simply Meant to Be, that they hunt together , that they're always together, that friends like that always end up married because it's the closest thing to love they've got.

At the reaping when Katniss takes her sister's place, when Gale is holding the little girl, his eyes empty and his jaw a tight line, Peeta watches and knows.

* * *

She'd saved her once. Katniss, that is. Given her bread she'd let drop in the oven and mother had hit her hard with the back of her hand. She'd left Katniss the bread.

She'd done it for selfish reasons, she knows. Out of kindness, of course, but also because she had watched Katniss at school, had watched Katniss and Gale from a stool in the bread shop. They had a natural sort of friendship, easy to see in their posture and smiles, and she'd spent too-long days imagining herself a part of that friendship, inserted into their lives so seamlessly, so easy.

She'd given Katniss the burnt bread out of a friendship that never existed. She thinks about that, and she can't quite place the feeling when she sees Katniss now and what an extra day of food has given her.

* * *

Peeta watches the Games in the square most days, among a crowd of people with slouched backs and glazed eyes.

Their male tribute, some boy she doesn't know, dies two days in by the hands of a girl with knives from the Careers. Katniss thrives, her hunting skills her saving point, up in the trees with her bow and her arrow.

Sometimes Gale is in the same crowd as her, a few feet in front or to the side, his eyes wild with an anger Peeta doesn't know the source.

* * *

They officially meet by accident.

Peeta is walking after school to avoid going home, out along the fence that is almost never on. Her fingers brush along the rusted links that are starting to burn from the sun, and she looks through the fence, out to the woods where the trees and the game Gale hunts are, and imagines what it would be like to go out to these woods every other day. Break the law. Be with friends. Not have to worry about mother or about bread or about anything else.

She hadn't resolved to do anything when she comes to the hole in the fence, hadn't thought about it much, but she ducks under and through it, to the other side.

There's an initial rush of fear and excitement, that she's doing something against the law. It thrums in her chest, heart banging at the curve of her ribs, and she sucks in a short, quick breath.

She walks further out into the actual woods and keeps walking, her hands reaching to brush against the trunks of the trees, her eyes upturned, imagining again what it must be like to spend the days up in the branches, in direct defiance of the law and the Capitol.

She turns sharply at the whine of a bending branch, at the thud of feet landing from high up, and for the first time she is looking at Gale and he is looking back at her.

"What are you doing out here?" he asks, more like demands, and there's anger there, more anger Peeta wonders at. "You shouldn't be here. It's dangerous."

"I was curious," she says, honest. Her hand is still pressed flat against the tree, more a foothold now than anything.

"You should go back now."

"Why?"

"Because—" He trails off, his expression changing to almost embarrassment, and Peeta wonders if he's mad because this is where he and Katniss always go, because this is the place he can think clearest of her.

"I'll go. I'm sorry."

She walks past him before he can say anything. There's a burn, a tightening, in her chest, and she is quick to push it away.

* * *

Almost nobody besides the officials can afford the bakery nowadays, but her mother makes her wait the store anyway. It's always empty, always passed by except for the people from the Seam who stop to stare at the elaborately decorated confectionaries they can never hope to have.

She sits behind the counter and draws on sugar cookies with different colored icing to pass the times, and thinks about Katniss, who's still alive and fighting, and thinks about Gale, who looks so lost.

The door opens with an audible creak. She's thinking she needs to oil the hinges when she looks up and then she isn't thinking at all.

"Hey," Gale says, his eyes looking pointedly in the direction of her left shoulder.

"Um. Hi?" She sets the tube of icing down and stands up. "Can I help you?"

"Is your dad around?"

"No. He went out. He'll be back in a couple hours."

"Oh."

Gale doesn't leave and Peeta looks at him expectantly, her fingers itching for the icing again, to finish the outstretched wings of the bird she'd been in the middle of drawing onto a pale brown cookie.

"I don't own the whole forest," Gale says, quickly and abruptly.

"What?"

"You can go out there if you really want to. I'm not going to stop you or anything."

"Okay." He turns his head, turns his shoulders as if to go. "Thank you."

"Yeah. Whatever." He leaves quickly and bangs the door closed too hard and Peeta watches him go till she can't see him anymore.

* * *

She goes to the woods a few more times and they don't run into each other.

She looks out into the thick of the trees she hardly knows how to navigate, that she can't go too far into the for fear of getting lost, and wonders if Gale is somewhere in there, watching her without a word.

* * *

The cameras come when Katniss is still alive by the top six to interview the family and friends. They interview Gale after everyone else mentions him, and the whole time he looks ready to break something, to break the camera and storm off to the woods, but of course he can't go outside with all the Capitol people and their cameras.

She finds him when it's dark. She isn't looking for him, really, but he's there in her path, leaning heavy against the chain link fence, fingers in the links, hair mussed, breathing heavy like he's trying real hard to hold something back.

She stops and he doesn't notice her yet, looks at him and thinks about how much he must be hurting, wonders what it would be like to have someone so close to her be chosen, having to watch them fight and die on all the telescreens because it's the law.

Gale heaves a heavy sigh and straightens up and looks at her without any surprise. He must have been able to hear her, should have, being so attuned to sharp sounds as he is.

"I hate them," he says and it lacks the fire she usually hears. "I really do."

"I know," she says. She doesn't move any closer but she doesn't leave either. They stand there and the ache to her chest comes again and doesn't lessen, and she thinks it's just her luck to have a hopeless case of liking a boy like Gale.

* * *

They call Katniss the Girl on Fire. People look at her and they think of revolution, she knows. Gale looks at her and thinks of the Capitol. It's almost as if he thinks of her as if she's already dead, like the Capitol has already taken her, and the premature rage and grief is fast-consuming inside him.

Peeta looks at Katniss and she can't see what they see. She sees only a girl with a dirty face, with rough hands and blood on her shirt, with a bow and arrow and a new sort of anger in the hard line of her jaw, with tears in her eyes as she scatters flowers over a dead little girl, a girl who didn't have to die. She can't see the metaphor under the girl and she wonders at how everyone else can see it so transparently through her, how her mere surviving can inspire them on a screen when it did nothing while she was here.

* * *

There's not much left to the Games now. There are three kids left—Katniss and two Careers. The girl has an itching to kill, everyone can see, and there's something off about the boy, about his inappropriate burst of rage and violence, about the way he killed one of his own teammates before their time.

Peeta doesn't think there's a good chance at Katniss coming out victor, and she wonders how Gale is coping with everything. She almost wishes Katniss had died in the beginning, so he could already be grieving and moving past it.

She finishes her chores at the bakery and decorating as many cookies as she can reach until she's sure her parents are fast asleep and then she goes to the hole in the fence, to the forest.

It's dark and she can hardly tell where one tree stops and another begins, but she keeps on walking, farther than she has before, until when she looks back she can't see the outline of the fence anymore, only more trees, more branches reaching out over her head.

"What are you doing?" someone asks, Gale asks, and she looks up to where his voice came from, but she can't see him.

"What?"

"Why are you out here so late? You'll get lost."

He climbs down from the tree, stands in front of her, closer than before, so close she can feel the heat of him against her. He doesn't have his bow and arrow or any of his hunting gear, only a single knife slid into the waistband of his pants.

"This seemed like a good place to think," she says.

"How were you planning on getting back?" he asks. Something twitches at the corner of his mouth, something she thinks looks like a smirk.

She shrugs. "I didn't think about it."

He's a good head taller than her. She has to look up to see his face when they're so close. She tilts her head back and he's looking down at her, something strange in his eyes.

"I see you when you come out here," he says. "You don't ever come out this far."

"I wanted to think," she repeats.

"Me too. I always sit out here when I need to think about stuff."

She wonders if Katniss would come with him, or if this place is entirely his own, if even his best friend doesn't know about it.

"Do you miss her?" she asks, and immediately after thinks it's incredibly inappropriate. Of course he misses her, she thinks. That was stupid to ask.

But, Gale doesn't act like it was stupid at all. He nods at her, serious. "I miss her all the time."

They keep looking at each other, but somehow it isn't awkward. He leans his head closer and she tilts her head a little more and she can feel his breath hot on her face.

"Sometimes I think I need to start to forgetting, though."

She's surprised when he kisses her. His mouth is hot and dry and his lips are chapped. He keeps on kissing her, small ones turning into longer ones, mouths open and his hands grip hard at the base of her skull to force her closer, and she has to stand up on the tips of her toes to keep up. The muscles in her calves strain and she almost stumbles, has to pull back enough to breathe a full breathe.

"You're too tall," she mumbles, suddenly feeling acutely aware of how she has no idea what she's doing, what to do. "Sorry."

He just shakes his, eyes dark. He takes her hands in his and pulls her to the ground with him, doesn't even pause before he starts kissing her again, pushing her onto her back. He's a heavy weight on her chest and when he kisses her she wonders if he's thinking of someone else, if he's only kissing her because he's sad.

His hands move from her head, skimming down her sides to the hem of her shirt, going under to touch her bare hips.

"Is this okay?" he asks, just once.

She nods her head, closes her eyes, and doesn't say another thing.

* * *

She's not sure what to think when Cato wins the Hunger Games.

District 12 is resigned to it, she guesses, already going back to their day-to-day business as if nothing has happened. On the screen she can see Haymitch is already drunk, already making a fool out of himself while the Capitol crowds cheer Cato on.

She sees Gale in the crowd at the square, but Gale does not see her. He's staring at the screen, his face a mask of anger and grief, and it's like the night in the woods never happened, and she thinks she should act like it never happened too.

The brief spark of revolution has passed as quickly as it came. Life goes on the same as before the Games started, with Gale in his own world, with Peeta on the sidelines, wondering what must go on in his mind (except it is different, but no one is saying it—Katniss is dead, she's dead and she's never coming back).

Briefly, she wonders if it could've been different. If things could've gone better with different circumstances. If Gale had been chosen. If Peeta had been chosen.

But wondering never did her much good, she knows, so she pushes thoughts like that away, and turns back to the tube of icing in her hand, and the beginnings of a curl of flame on a peach-colored cookie.


End file.
